The Penn's Grove record., 1887-08-20

dred and Forty-three of the Killed
and Wounded Tins Far Identified
CHICAGO, Aug. IL.
The Chicago Times special from
Forest, Ills,, says: All the railway
horrors In the history of this country
were surpassed three miles east OF
Chatsworth last night when an excur-
sion train on the Toledo, Peoria and
Western road dropped through a burn
igg bridge, and owe II hundred peo'
pie were killed and four times that
number were more or less badly in
jured. The train was composed OF SIN
sleeping cars, six day coaches and
char cars and three baggage. 1t was
carrying 900 passengers, all excursion
lists, and was bound for Niagara Falls.
Three miles east of Cbatsworth is a
little slough, and where the railroad
crosses a dry run, about ten feet deeI
and fifteen feet wide. Over this was
stretched an ordinary wooden tTestle
bridge, and as the excursion train came
laundering down on it what was the
horror of the engineer on the front en-
engine when he saw that the bridge
was a fire. Right up before his eyes
Ieaped the bright flames, and the next
instant he was among them. There
was no chance TO stop. Had there
been warning it would have taken a
half mile to stop that on-rushing mass
of wood, iron and human lives, and
the train was within one hundred
yards of the red tongued messenger OF
death before they flashed their fatal
signals into the engineers face. But
he passed over in safety. the first engine
keeping the rails. AS it went over the
bridge fell beneath 1t, and it could only
have been the terrific speed OF the train
which saved the lives of the engineer
and his fireman. But the next engine
went down and Instantly the deed of
death was done. Car crashed into car,
coaches piled on top of another, and in
the twinkling of III eye nearly forty
people found instant death, and fifty
more were SO badly hurt they could not
live. AS for the wounded. they were
everywhere. Only the sleeping. coaches
escaped, and as the startled and half
0ACcoCn BdooCu6CLo SaihC bulhbllhh ~
OF them they found such a scene of
death as is rarely witnessed, and such
work to do that it seemed as if human
hands were utterly incapable.
IL lacked but five minutes of Md
night. Down in the ditch lay the Sec
ond engineer, Engineer McClintock,
dead, and Fireman Apologize badly
injured. On top were piled the three
baggage cars, one on top of another,
like a child's card house after he had
swept it with lis hand. Then came
the six day coaches. They were tele-
scoped as cars never were before and
three of them were pressed into just
space enough for one. The second car
had mounted off its trucks, crashed
through the car ahead of it, crushing
the woodwork aside like finder, and
lay there, resting on the tops of the
seats, while every passenger in the
front car lay dead and dying under
meath. Out of that car but four people
came alive. On top of the second Car
lay the third. and its bottom was
smeared with the blood of its victims.
The other three cars were not 80 badly
crushed, but they were broken and
twisted in every conceivable way, and
every crushed timber and beam repre-
scented a crushed human frame and a
broken bone. Instantly the air was
filled with cries of the wounded and
the shrieks of those about to die. The
groans OF men and the scream of
women united to make an appalling
sound, and above all could be heard
the agonlZing cries of little children as,
IN some Instances, they lay pinned
alongside their dead parents.
ChatswCrth was turned into a
to-day. The Town Hall, the
engine house, the depot were all full
of dead bodies, while every house in
the little village has its quota of the
wounded. There were over 100 corpses
lying in the extemporized dead houses.
and every man and woman was turned
into an amateur but Jealous nurse.
In the Town Hall was the hos
pital, and III it anxious relatives and
sorrowing friends sat, and tanning
gently the sufferers faces, queried
the attending surgeons as they bound
the wounds, and insisted that there
must be hope. Down In the dead
houses, fathers, husbands, brothers,
wives and children tearfully in
spected each face as 1t was uncovered,
and sighed as the features were I'M
known, or cried out in anguish when
the well-known face, sometimes fear
fully mangled, but yet recognizable,
uncovered.
The entire capacity Of the little viii
lage was taxed, and kind-hearted
women drove in from miles to give
their gentle ministratlons to the suf-
ferers.
HUMAN HYENAs PLUNDERING TIE
DEAD.
No sooner had the wreck occurred
than a scene of robbery commenced.
Some band of unspeskable miscreants,
heartless and with only animal instincts,
on hand, and, like the guerillas
who throng a battlefield the night
after the conflict aud hlch from the
dead the money which they received
for their meagre pay, stealing even the
bronze medals and robblng from the
children of heroes the other worthless
emblems Of their fathers bravery, so
last night did those human hyenas
plumber the dead from this terrible
accident and take W. the shoes which
covered their feet. Who these wretches
are is not now known. Whether they
we're aband of pick-pockets who accom-
panied the train or some robber gang
who were lurking In the vicinity cannot
be said. The horrible suspicion, how
ever, exists, and there are many who
give 1t credit, that the accident was a
deliberately planned case of tram
wreeking; that the bridge was set on
Ore by miscreants who hoped to seize
The opportunity offered, and the fact
hat the bridge vas so far consumed at
he time the train came along, and the
added fact that the train was an hour
and a haif late, are pointed out as evil
ience Of a careful conspiracy. 1t seems
hardly possible that man could be- so
.ost to all the ordinary feeling which
animates the basest of the human race,
but still. men who will rob dead men,
who will steal from the dying and
NIL plumber the wounded, held down
BY broken beams of a wrecked car,